With Huge Variability in Hospital Prices, Patients Must Beware

The American health-care system is befuddling in so many ways, but the variation in hospital prices is among the most confounding.

The price for back surgery at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center can cost $46,000 — three times as much as it costs at Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Center. If you’re looking for knee or hip replacement, at $92,000 you could wind up paying four-times more at Multicare Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup than the $23,000 price tag at Wenatchee Valley Hospital.

Across the state and for services ranging from urinary tract infections to strokes, the prices for care are two, three or even four times more expensive from one facility to another.

And with insurance plans boosting the amount of costs that patients have to pay while covering smaller networks of hospitals and doctors, these price differences can hit consumers hard.

“Understanding hospital sticker prices in advance of a hospital stay can help both insured and uninsured patients reduce sticker shock,” said John Gallagher, spokesman for Washington Health Alliance, a nonprofit that released the cost comparisons in a new report.

“Because more out-of-pocket costs are being shifted to consumers and because unpaid medical bills have become a leading reason for personal bankruptcy, it’s important for health consumers to understand the financial risks they might face as patients―whether they have insurance or not,” he said in an email.